Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/WLM-US 2013 discussion

This page is for discussion of Wiki Loves Monuments - 2012, what worked well and what didn't, but most importantly it is for discussion of Wiki Loves Monuments - 2013, how we can improve WLM next year.

Just a few statistics on WLM-US 2012 (updated from last month): 22,044 photos uploaded by just over 2,000 users (~90% newbies) into Commons:Category:Images from Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 in the United States, with 30 editors uploading over 100 photos each. 5,865 of these files are now used in articles or lists (26.6% of all files in the category), on 3,232 article or list pages with 8,162 total uses (from http://toolserver.org/~magnus/ts2/glamorous/ a very useful tool). The "usage" would be higher if we consider the commonscat template on article pages for historic districts where commonscat is quite useful.

In all our lists 45,324 out of 87,901 (51.56%) sites have photos as of Dec 3, up from 38,896 (44.63%) photos on Aug. 31, an increase of 6,428 (not all from WLM) (from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Monuments_database/Statistics ). Very, very roughly we got in one month the number of photos usually uploaded in one year. If the example of the Netherlands is applicable here, then this rate of upload should continue at least another 2 years during the contest. We also got new uploaders from all around the country, including states where we've been weak before.

For the most part, I'll say that the photos were comparable in quality to our usual photos, and the new photos were placed in lists and articles within a few days of uploading, which the newbie uploaders definitely cared about. There was however a delay of a couple of weeks restocking WP:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images right as the contest ended. Several of the new uploaders are still uploading on a regular basis and/or have moved into creating articles. There haven't been any major copyright problems, maybe a dozen mostly related to sculptures which are always difficult. Several counties have reached Fully-Illustrated status (e.g. Montgomery and Bucks County, PA near me - thanks Shuvaev!) There was a drive to create articles for the 500 pix sent to the jury and at least 54 new articles were created. There were also several interesting discussion related to WLM on the talk page, and I'll suggest that this has helped loosen up an occasionally staid, conservative project.

There were also a few negatives (what would a photo contest be without negatives? ;-p ) These were mostly attributable to me as coordinator, e.g. there were several Wiki-meetups and events arranged by WALRUS that contributed photos, but basically I had no idea how to integrate them into the contest. The worst, for me, was the California State lists which just kinda showed up on my doorstep one day like an orphan, and I allowed it to just kinda stay there. While the jury itself was great, the process leading up to the photos being sent to the final jury needs some work. We definitely over-worked Thundersnow, who showed a few days before the contest started (an absolute life-saving miracle), began placing photos and put in enough hours to get his Wiki-pension vested.

So I won't ask whether we should do this again. It's pretty obvious to me that we will continue it in some form. But what form? What should we take out, what should we add? Did we do anything that inconvenienced the members of WP:NRHP who didn't want to participate? And who wants to coordinate this next year? Smallbones( smalltalk ) 20:07, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

A couple of direct questions:

Use of the upload button
This was pretty controversial in the days before starting the contest. It is crucial to the contest.
 * Should we use it next year, perhaps in modified form? e.g. just for unphotographed sites and historic districts?
 * Should we use it for unphotographed sites throughout the year, likely with different placement?
 * At first I thought the buttons would be distracting, but as a contributor to the contest I found them to be quite helpful for two reasons: easy access to the uploading tool and the added convenience of pre-fabricated information. I am not certain I would want to see requests for uploading all the time throughout Wikipedia, but perhaps they prove to be both helpful and beneficial to certain lists. -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 04:29, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * No, because this project still doesn't have the right to ignore project-wide consensus. Nyttend (talk) 05:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Nyttend's right, unfortunately. I didn't use it myself, but I thought the button was friendly to the newbies and prevented more errors than it caused. One thing that probably didn't work as intended were the various mobile apps people were using to upload. In some cases these didn't handle categories correctly, and nobody told the apps when the contest ended. One user who uses such an app still keeps populating the 2012 category. Ntsimp (talk) 05:14, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Consensus against? 'Fraid I didn't see where that happened.  Anyway I thought the WLM Android app with upload button was the nicest part of the whole thing.  Quick and easy, and usually providing geotag.  Something like that should be a regular service.  From Google Map, we can tap W for article summary and tap at bottom for the actual article, mobile version.  I do this more weeks than not, year around hunting for targets in the field.  This ought to show an upload button, or tap for the official Wikipedia app for that article with upload button.  Jim.henderson (talk) 10:56, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * IMO, the upload links can be retained without using an image that calls so much attention to the absence of a photo. Minimize the image. (I wasn't aware of the Android app -- is it still available and functioning? It would be beneficial to make something like that permanent.) --Orlady (talk) 18:12, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

We've got some time to work on this, e.g. if we want to and need to try to change a rule to implement upload buttons. I'll just ask that nobody take a fixed position that we absolutely have to or absolutely can't, before we decide what we want to do. Modifying rules is one of the most common procedures on Wikipedia and we have the time to do it. Of course we'd have to make an effort to do it right, if we want to do it, e.g. bring in lots of folks who may disagree with us and publicize the discussion on Village Pump.

My reading of the problem is that less than a dozen editors several years ago came to a fairly confused consensus (liberally defined) to disallow "placeholders" for people's portraits in articles. Admins then began enforcing this rule in a straightforward way to anything that looks like a placeholder - perhaps they have a newer consensus among themselves on what the rule actually means. In any case the rule needs to be clarified, and if we need to we can likely modify it in the usual Wikipedia way.

May I suggest a starting point that everybody should be able to work with. Let's assume that the rule is not completely clear, but that we should not ignore it in the next WLM. After deciding what we really want to do with the upload button (year round vs. one month, etc.), then we can make a narrowly focused request for clarification, or (as individuals, not as a project) attempt to change the rule in the least disruptive way possible. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 18:23, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I liked the placeholders on the list and feel that it's significantly different than the placeholder image which had been put on biographies. The biography placeholder was right in your face in MANY articles and it made Wikipedia look bad for not having an image. It was way different than a missing image on a list having a small link to uploading it. I think we should do an RFC to reassess consensus allowing an upload form for adding images to a list. And just have it for unphotographed sites and historic districts to eliminate multiple uploads.  Royal broil  03:36, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

If it merely, and prominently, asks readers to find their way through the usual routine of Commons, finding a category and the other complications we hard-core Wikiphotographers happily endure every day, then no. Rather it should discretely, for example in a line or two near the bottom of any unillustrated article about a person or place or the infobox, ask for a photo. More important, clicking ought to bring up a simplified Commons uploading form with filename, a few provisional categories and a partial description already robotically stocked with information from the article. That can be a boon to illustration and an attraction to newbies, without being a corporate embarrassment. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:04, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh! It is done! And it works! Yesterday at this time (about 13:30 EST) on my way up Fulton Street to a German artist's walking tour, I saw a building labelled "Brooklyn Tabernacle". Hmm, has Wikipedia an article, prefererably an unillustrated one? "Yes!" my Android phone told me, and it has a button to tap, labelled with something like "Upload the first picture for this article". So, I tapped it, stepped back a little, snapped a poor picture, and tapped the upload button. I saw the picture in the article, put the phone away and joined a dozen history fans for a tour of Eminent Domain sites in Brooklyn Heights, Vinegar Hill, Fort Green and so forth. Alas, upon getting home I failed to find any sign of my upload. Apparently I did something wrong; probably failed to tap a confirmation button. Haste and surprise together make wasted effort. However, sitting calmly in my easy chair today I succeeded in uploading from the Android Gallery. This is very pleasant. Now I have to figure how to make the camera phone take better pictures. Won't return to Brooklyn however until Tuesday, probably after Sunset, but will stop at the front side of the building on Smith Street and hope for a better picture. Jim.henderson (talk) 18:38, 9 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I really like the upload button and was hoping there would be a similar function to keep using after the contest ended (so we did not have to look up the NRHP # or the coordinates and add them by hand). Perhaps there could be a link in the article for each NRHP site to aid uploads, or a small upload image link for each somewhere in the lists. I did not like the limited licensing options using the button though (no GFDL and CC-BY-SA). Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 05:02, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Today on my Android phone I'm seeing an "add the first photo" button at the top of each unillustrated article for any particular NRHP. Whatever causes it, it doesn't show on my home Windows screen or in the article's markup. Mysterious, but highly useful. In the NYC area, which is the only place I ever go, NRHP list articles have a link to the individual article of each item, if there is one. In a few cases the same building has different names, so I must use my local familiarity to find and link them. The article, even if it wasn't previously watched, appears on my watchlist. The upload also appears in my Commons watchlist. Main shortcomings are, there's no description section and the Commons categorization bot runs later and is very dumb. All of which I can easily live with. Lack of my favorite license choice is very little bother; in the field I wouldn't want to take time to tap out of the default anyway. Simplicity is the supreme merit when my fingers are getting cold. Jim.henderson (talk) 04:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Some of the above is about the android app - which I think is still working. I was more concerned with the upload button on the county lists.  If I read the above correctly, just about everybody likes the upload button in one way or another, but a couple of folks have "procedural issues" about including it.  We can very likely include better info and more flexibility in using the upload button and minimize its visual effect on the tables (which I didn't like at all).  To minimize the button, would you prefer a smaller button only for unphotographed sites, or perhaps putting it in the description column, or perhaps making a whole new narrow column for it?  I'll try to work with Nyttend on finding the best place for an RfC on this and try to frame the issue as narrowly as possible.  Smallbones( smalltalk ) 04:21, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

True, upload buttons are plentiful and diverse and have diverse problems. Some are available only by mobile, which as a mobile photographer is where I want them. The WLM phone app, whose database of desired pictures hasn't been updated for months, has upload buttons. The Beta version of the mobile web version has an upload button at the top of every unillustrated article, even disambiguators as I learned last night by looking up BRT which clearly it should not.

After WLM ended, such buttons in list articles as shown on the old "desktop version" of Wikipedia disappeared. This version is what the majority of readers and almost all editors still use, and to me the button question is less important in this version because I cannot use it in the field and the old methods serve me well enough at the desk. However, many editors, especially our much-desired newbies, would be better served by upload buttons, both on individual articles and on list ones. Not terribly prominent buttons, however. For list items for which we have no picture, a button in the picture column might work quite well, but many existing pictures are poor and beg replacement. I think a separate column is too much for this purpose, and like the idea of an icon in the description column. Like, a simple camera symbol to click on, with of course a hover box to explain its purpose. I wonder if there's a more general, more centralized discussion somewhere about upload buttons. Jim.henderson (talk) 15:17, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Timing of the contest
The international organizers love September, but they have made a couple of minor exceptions, e.g. for Israel's holiday. They'll try to disuade us, but would anybody else prefer to do this in July?
 * I have to admit, contributing to a real-time international project was more exciting and incentivizing (visible Commons edit count here). I would still want to participate in a U.S.-only competition, but tracking and observing the contest from a global perspective is more interesting. If others feel the same way I do, perhaps there is good reason to keep the contest in alignment with the international organizers. -- Another Believer ( Talk ) 04:34, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Why July? If you suggested it somewhere else, I missed it (link would be appreciated); if not, it would help if you explained why you're suggesting it.  Nyttend (talk) 05:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I vote September. I really liked being part of something worldwide. Besides, I probably got more pictures taken with the kids in school. Ntsimp (talk) 05:16, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

July would be a great time because:
 * long daylight hours giving folks the opportunity to take lots of photos
 * vacations and holidays giving folks lots of time to take photos (Including non-US citizens taking vacations here)
 * and recognizing, without in any way being pushy about it, that patriotism or love of county has a place in this project, that many people will be motivated to take photos during July.

September is not so good because, with the start of the school year, many folks are busy with other things. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 18:38, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Making it not in September you basically risk not being recognized by the international organizing committee. I would not do it unless there are really serious arguments. Arguments of daylight and number of vacationers, as well of the national holidays are not serious because they would apply to every other country as well.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:21, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, yes, I seriously believe that every country in the northern hemisphere should seriously consider having the contest in July. Daylight and time available to take photos are about the most serious factors I can think of for the timing of a photo contest.  Smallbones( smalltalk ) 22:32, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * This is fine, and I might support this shift, but not a unilateral shift of the US.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:37, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think that we should do it whenever the rest of the world does it - so keep in September.  Royal broil  03:40, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it should be timed to coincide with the world-wide contest. I wonder if we could extend it so as to include photos uploaded in the past year (or 6 months) prior to the official start of the contest. Since the contest let people upload photos they had taken at any time in the past, I think this would be OK and would also let people upload pics in the summer (or whenever they had time) and then use them later in the contest. I know I recently uploaded a few images that I considered holding on to and waiting to upload next year for the contest (I uploaded them anyway). Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 05:12, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I understand about wanting to include pictures in the contest from year-round, but don't think it would fly with the international group. It would pretty much transform a one-month contest into a year-round contest. I also don't like giving people an incentive to hold pix until September, but the idea of letting newbies (and thus everybody else) upload old pix makes a lot of sense. BTW, have you seen the guy uploading the pix from the 1970s? Maybe we could have two separate contests - our own October-August - nominate your 3 best pix for the 11 months, and the other contest in September with the international rules.

As I read the opinions above, nobody wants to move to a one-month July contest if it means being out of step with the international contest. Is anybody in favor of trying to move the international contest to July? Smallbones( smalltalk ) 04:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Organizing the pre-jury judging
It takes a lot of time to look at 22,000 photos (think 15 seconds per photo). Israel came up with a reasonable judging tool near the end of the contest, and it has now been tested for smaller groups of photos, for a small group of judges. The tradeoff is between inviting in the general public for a single-knockout round, or loading a ton of work on a few judges. Having multiple public voting on 22,000 photos, to my knowledge doesn't work - or at least nobody came up with a program that would do it. I'll suggest getting at least 10 people to commit to at least 10 hours of voting each - can that be accomplished?
 * No opinion on my part; when it's time for next year's contest, I'll either be unemployed or beginning my first professional job, so I don't have the slightest clue what I could do. Nyttend (talk) 05:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we could slash the workload simply by prohibiting self-nomination. A clear, visible explanation of the categories before and during the contest would help too. Ntsimp (talk)

I'm not at all comfortable saying "We gotta have x people volunteer or else ..." For one thing I don't think it would work with this project. But I do think it is important for everybody to know that if we want certain features in the program, e.g. a photo contest where every photo is actually looked at, then there are certain labor requirements, e.g. 100+ hours. If people want to suggest certain features in WLM, I'll ask that they also consider how much work is required and who is going to do it. Are they volunteering?

The self-nomination system was certainly botched this year - coming as a last minute compromise between those who insisted that every photo be considered without any self-screening and me insisting that some self-screening was necessary. Compromising those contradictory positions just made a mess and more work. I still think that self-nomination is the way to go. If every uploader just nominated 1 photo, we'd only have 2,000 photos and the work component would not be worth mentioning. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 19:03, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * With the right software, reviewing is much easier that currently. Probably that should be considered too. Reviewing could take 1 second per image if you can speed up the technical side a bit, which suddenly means that 60.000 images (lets take a nightmare scenario) would only take 1000 minutes or 16 hours for the first level per reviewer. But improving the the software is definitely a requirement for this. effeietsanders 19:12, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I actually thought that this part went well. The pre-jury judging was fair and unbiased. I liked how the public was allowed to nominate images (even their own) but pre-judges like myself were only able to nominate their 10 favorites (that were not their own) to the jury. Some people are so good at photography and photo editing that they deserve multiple nominations. I wish I had half of their editing skills to work with my photography skills.  Royal broil  03:54, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I also thought this went pretty well. I like the idea of limiting self-nominations to one per nominator. I wonder if there could be some way to check all the nominated photos in a category, so that there was also a limit of one or two photos per NRHP (or whatever) site. I did some first round judging and saw a fair number of sites that had multiple photos nominated which seemed counter-productive (this would also avoid self-nominators who took many similar photos of the same site and nominated them all). Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 12:52, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad so many people think it worked well, but I was thinking that just below the surface... And if we had had 30,000 photos it could have been a major disaster. I can certainly contribute a lot of time to this, but not nearly as much as I did this year. Maybe somebody who is more technically proficient with voting systems would like to take over this aspect of the contest? Self-nomination is one possible way to go. Getting input from the general public might be another way - though is technically difficult. Limiting nomination to just sites not previously photographed on the lists might be another. Technical fixes can only go so far - i.e. I don't think a 1 second evaluation time per photo is reasonable even if the software supported it. In any case, I can't make last year's system work next year without a whole lot of help. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 05:20, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Helping the newbies
As far as I saw, everybody in the project was helpful to newbies when asked, but there was no organization or time to go out and actively help. This is the most important step to me. If we can get 1% of the newbies (that's 20) to keep contributing after the contest, we'll get close to being fully illustrated in a couple of years!

Is there a way to get another 10 people to contribute another 10 hours of time?

Please feel free to answer any or all of these questions and add in more questions. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 04:02, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Ditto my response to the previous question. I have no opinions about getting others to contribute time.  Nyttend (talk) 05:13, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not quite sure what you mean. Could you please expand? I was monitoring for instance the Commons WLM desk and I hope I gave satisfactory answers to the questions. Do you have in mind some specific activities?--Ymblanter (talk) 22:24, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * No complaints about answering questions or anything like that, but I'm thinking of a major outreach, rather than waiting for questions to come in. Somebody uploads a few pix and we reach out to see if they have questions, if they know how to find the lists, what type of info to put in the upload, what are the copyright difficulties (e.g. sculptures) teach them how to put the pix directly into the lists, start them on how to write article if they want to.  Not all at once of course - we'd scare the heck out of them! But having some sort of mentoring to move newbies into the project, we could get that 1% of the uploaders as working project members and really effect the project.   Smallbones( smalltalk ) 22:55, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Could software or a bot be created to track the number of uploads that a contributor uploaded to the category? Perhaps someone(s) could reach out to those who have uploaded over a certain number. We could offer to answer questions and have the message loaded with wikilinks with directions on how to do certain tasks like you mentioned. Certainly anyone at any experience level could contact me if they need Commons admin help or advice.  Royal broil  04:03, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I like Royalbroil's idea. Could there also be a bot generated welcome message with a talk page link to a random volunteer from the NRHP Wikiproject that the newbies could contact if they had questions or needed advice or help? So if there were 20 experienced editors who volunteered to help out, and the bot put names on at ramdom, each person might have their name on close to 100 newbie talk pages as a potential contact. Ruhrfisch &gt;&lt;&gt; &deg; &deg; 20:48, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Expanding the scope
Should the state lists be allowed next year (then they need to be prepared), or may be just for some states, or only NRHP?--Ymblanter (talk) 21:48, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, if anybody wants to start getting state or local lists ready, we could do that. We'd also need to have some idea what we want to do with the lists (and who is going to do it). Just a warning, state and local lists are pretty diverse, I'll suggest looking at each proposal individually. It wouldn't make any sense to assume that the Texas State list, works or is organized in any way similar to the New York City local list. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 23:04, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I would be interested to help.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:47, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Perhaps something that might work well through the veins of WALRUS? effeietsanders 11:55, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * What about expanding the eligible sites beyond just the NRHP to 1) Areas in the United States National Park System are fairly well-documented but state protected areas including state parks aren't very well documented, and 2) National Natural Landmarks. National lakeshores and seashores are well documented.  Royal broil  12:57, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
 * See Wiki Loves Monuments 2012 about what fit, at least for 2012. I would think state and local registers could be added.  There is much less coverage of these in Wikipedia, are under wp:HSITES, rather than under wp:NRHP.  There are lists for the historic registers of 5 states (AL, CA, MI, MS, NV) and of 7 U.S. cities (L.A., San Fran, Chicago, NYC, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Oyster Bay), specifically listed at WikiProject Historic sites.  If there is not yet a list in existence, it is hard to see how a register could be included.  Editor (and Wikipedia employee?) SarahStierch did a great job tableizing out the List of California Historical Landmarks all by herself I think, just prior to WLM2012, but that was already started and somewhat developed, and definitive list sources were quite clear and identified. -- do  ncr  am  06:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Preparing NRHP HDs articles to receive pics
During WLM2012, Smallbones led an effort to create individual articles for NRHPs not yet having them, where pics were uploaded. There occasionally have been cases, in WLM2012 or otherwise, where pics of wrong objects were uploaded to NRHP list-articles, e.g. of a modern bank building or fire station that replaced the historic NRHP-listed one. Having articles existing with NRHP nom docs linked, allows for checking of pics by reviewers, or, better, allows persons to be informed before taking a pic or uploading it. And, where an article is created, multiple new photos can all be put right in, or set up into commons categories that are linked. For Historic districts, especially, it seems a shame that many uploaded pics were not accomodated in the 'pedia, rather just one pic was selected to represent the HD at the list-article. Should we push to add NRHP nom docs where now available, and/or to create articles in advance, say for all HDs? -- do ncr  am  06:08, 11 December 2012 (UTC)